Thursday, April 19, 2007

Human rights

With a particularly stark sense of timing, the Supreme Court has clearly laid out what Barney Frank has always declared to be the Theocons' view of the right to life: it begins at conception and ends at birth.

Now a "partial birth abortion" is a particularly gruesome (and rarely used) procedure that is difficult to defend. It could only be justified in the most extreme of situations, when the fetus is so deformed it has no chance of survival outside the womb and the mother is at risk by continuing the pregnancy.

But by eliminating a provision that has always allowed the procedure when a mother's life in danger the court has finally said what "right-to-life" advocates have always wanted to hear -- the fetus triumphs over all. The child and the mother, that's another story.

The situation only becomes more stark with the realization that many of the same people who will cheer this Supreme Court decision as a protection of life will rise in protest at the thought that we, as a society, do something to protect other innocent lives.

The students and faculty at Virginia Tech were innocents until they unfortunately crossed paths with Cho Seung Hui. But their right to life did not rise to the same level of importance has his right to purchase semi-automatic weapons monthly without an even cursory examination of what we now know is a twisted angry "soul."

Unfettered access to guns is apparently part of the right-to life culture in this nation. The contradictions, the hypocrisy, is stark